{"id":8062,"date":"2018-01-23T16:01:29","date_gmt":"2018-01-23T22:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=8062"},"modified":"2018-01-24T16:37:07","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T22:37:07","slug":"daca-photoessay-reveals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html","title":{"rendered":"What a DACA photoessay reveals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ret0dd\/5708625905\"<\/p>\n

The line we generally hear about illegal immigrants is this:\u00a0 they lived in grinding poverty in their home countries, so you can\u2019t really blame them for coming to the U.S., because here, even under the horrible conditions that come with living illegally, \u201cin the shadows,\u201d it\u2019s still an improvement on the inescapably awful circumstances in their home countries.\u00a0 It\u2019s what Cardinal Cupich said in his defense of illegal immigration<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The vast majority of immigrants come here because they are poor and desperately need work to support their families.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s what Jeb Bush said in his own \u201cact of love\u201d comments<\/a>:<\/p>\n

the way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn\u2019t come legally, they come to our country because their family\u2019s, you know, a dad who loved their children was worried that their children didn\u2019t have food on the table.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pope Francis, in his comments at the US\/Mexico border<\/a>, seemed to conflate illegal immigration to the U.S. with the ongoing matter of refugees fleeing Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East:<\/p>\n

We cannot deny the humanitarian crisis which in recent years has meant migration for thousands of people, whether by train or highway or on foot, crossing hundreds of kilometres through mountains, deserts and inhospitable zones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here\u2019s an excerpt from the official statements of the\u00a0Catholic bishops<\/a> on immigration:<\/p>\n

People have the right to migrate to sustain their lives and the lives of their families. . . .
\nWhen a person cannot achieve a meaningful life in his or her own land, that person has the right to move. . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Though they move from language of \u201csustaining their lives\u201d to finding a \u201cmeaningful life,\u201d they are certainly again promoting the idea that immigration is a result of intolerable circumstances at home.<\/p>\n

But yesterday\u2019s Tribune had a set of photos of so-called \u201cDreamers\u201d which certainly suggest it\u2019s not that simple.\u00a0 I\u2019d link to it but it doesn\u2019t appear to be available online.\u00a0 You\u2019ll have to take my word for it:\u00a0 14 black-and-white pictures of young adults, mostly singly, some in groups, mostly looking serious, if not a bit sad, with one or two sentence biographies \u2014 where they\u2019re from, when they came to the U.S., what they\u2019re doing now.\u00a0 The individuals are mostly high-achieving, and I presume were selected for this reason (one of them works at FWD.us, so I\u2019m going to guess that she organized the others).<\/p>\n

There are the usual Mexican immigrants:\u00a0 several now students, others working at a bookstore or a restaurant.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a Guatemalan woman, now age 25, who arrived at age 14 and apparently took a while to\u00a0accustom herself to the U.S.\u00a0as she\u2019s only just now studying at a community college.\u00a0 There are two Muslim women, one an engineer from Jordan and the other a medical student from Pakistan (side comment:\u00a0 both of these would, in principle, be eligible to apply for H1-B visas, no?).<\/p>\n

But then there are some other, odder, cases, revealing circumstances that don\u2019t fit with the \u201cparents left, children in tow, because it was they only way they could feed their families\u201d narrative.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a 24 year old man from Korea.\u00a0 Yes, he arrived at age 8, and if his parents truly never took him to Saturday Korean school, it would be a hardship to return back to Korea.\u00a0 But this means that he and his parents came in 2002 \u2014 a date well past the start of Korea\u2019s economic boom.\u00a0 Yes, in the late 90s, there was a financial crisis in 1997, but it seems unlikely that a family arriving in 2002 would really be a \u201chard case\u201d escaping terrible poverty or persecution.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a brother-sister pair from Poland.\u00a0 Yes, they arrived in 2001, which was 17 years ago.\u00a0 But Poland\u2019s accession to the European Union was in 2004, and by 2008 the country had nearly full access to the labor markets of the EU.\u00a0 There was no reason the family needed to stay in the U.S. to avoid economic hardship \u2014 heck, they could have gone to the UK if they wanted to stay in a prosperous English-speaking country.\u00a0 And even prior to EU accession, no one was starving.<\/p>\n

There are several individuals who had lived in Canada before coming here; of one, it specifically says that she was born in Canada, one of the few countries other than the U.S. to provide \u201cbirthright\u201d citizenship.\u00a0 Perhaps, in both cases, their parents traded living illegally in Canada for living illegally in the U.S., but, at least in the case of the \u201cborn in Canada\u201d woman, she\u2019s under no hardship and can move to Canada whenever she chooses.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a Somali man who was born in Germany, and came here at age 9.\u00a0 Yes, Germany does not have birthright citizenship, but it\u2019s still a curious case.\u00a0 Were his parents in Germany legally, and came to the U.S. on, say, a tourist visa which they overstayed?\u00a0 If so, why would they choose to leave Germany to live illegally in the U.S.?\u00a0 Or were they living illegally in Germany, and, if so, how did they get to the U.S.?\u00a0 It seems a pretty tortuous path to border-cross or be smuggled in, but would the U.S. really grant a tourist visa to a Somali living illegally in Germany?\u00a0 Aren\u2019t we supposed to have restrictions on such cases?<\/p>\n

And, finally, there\u2019s a 34-year-old Indian man who came at age 11, so he was 28 years old when DACA was implemented.\u00a0 He\u2019s now working as an \u201casset manager and financial analysis accountant.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to imagine that he was working under the table until DACA, then jumped at the chance to work at a professional job.\u00a0 Does the degree of forgery of documentation extend to such a degree that individuals are able to get professional jobs with those forged IDs?<\/p>\n

Note, too, that Jeb Bush\u2019s \u201cact of love\u201d comments were, in part, differentiating visa overstayers from border-crossers, giving the latter more moral rights to be here because of the assumption that the former, having had enough capital to purchase the necessary plane tickets from their home country (which, in the case of moving a family from India, must have been considerable).<\/p>\n

To be clear, I\u2019m not saying that these individuals, as children, were culpable for having come here, but instead pointing out that these brief snippets of lives point to a more complicated picture.<\/p>\n

These stories were supposed to be sympathetic.\u00a0 \u201cLook at all these worried faces!\u201d\u00a0 But it suggests that illegal immigration isn\u2019t the last hope of desperate people, but a very normalized, routine decision undertaken by all kinds of people to advance their standard of living.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

(Note: updated after publication.)<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ret0dd\/5708625905<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The line we generally hear about illegal immigrants is this:\u00a0 they lived in grinding poverty in their home countries, so you can\u2019t really blame them for coming to the U.S., because here, even under the horrible conditions that come with living illegally, \u201cin the shadows,\u201d it\u2019s still an improvement on the inescapably awful circumstances in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[741,463],"class_list":["post-8062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dream-act","tag-illegal-immigration"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat a DACA photoessay reveals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The line we generally hear about illegal immigrants is this:\u00a0 they lived in grinding poverty in their home countries, so you can't really blame them for\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What a DACA photoessay reveals\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The line we generally hear about illegal immigrants is this:\u00a0 they lived in grinding poverty in their home countries, so you can't really blame them for\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jane the Actuary\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-01-23T22:01:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-01-24T22:37:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/files\/2018\/01\/5708625905_502f6d8f08_b-1024x765.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jane the Actuary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jane the Actuary\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html\",\"name\":\"What a DACA photoessay reveals\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2018-01-23T22:01:29+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-01-24T22:37:07+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/ed9b99e0bd58c5eeeebae6b82fa5a77a\"},\"description\":\"The line we generally hear about illegal immigrants is this:\u00a0 they lived in grinding poverty in their home countries, so you can't really blame them for\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"What a DACA photoessay reveals\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/\",\"name\":\"Jane the Actuary\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/ed9b99e0bd58c5eeeebae6b82fa5a77a\",\"name\":\"Jane the Actuary\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d6a493d380e87d49599d5487691c9fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d6a493d380e87d49599d5487691c9fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Jane the Actuary\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/author\/actuaryjane\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What a DACA photoessay reveals","description":"The line we generally hear about illegal immigrants is this:\u00a0 they lived in grinding poverty in their home countries, so you can't really blame them for","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What a DACA photoessay reveals","og_description":"The line we generally hear about illegal immigrants is this:\u00a0 they lived in grinding poverty in their home countries, so you can't really blame them for","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html","og_site_name":"Jane the Actuary","article_published_time":"2018-01-23T22:01:29+00:00","article_modified_time":"2018-01-24T22:37:07+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/files\/2018\/01\/5708625905_502f6d8f08_b-1024x765.jpg"}],"author":"Jane the Actuary","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Jane the Actuary","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html","name":"What a DACA photoessay reveals","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#website"},"datePublished":"2018-01-23T22:01:29+00:00","dateModified":"2018-01-24T22:37:07+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/ed9b99e0bd58c5eeeebae6b82fa5a77a"},"description":"The line we generally hear about illegal immigrants is this:\u00a0 they lived in grinding poverty in their home countries, so you can't really blame them for","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/daca-photoessay-reveals.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What a DACA photoessay reveals"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/","name":"Jane the Actuary","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/ed9b99e0bd58c5eeeebae6b82fa5a77a","name":"Jane the Actuary","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d6a493d380e87d49599d5487691c9fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d6a493d380e87d49599d5487691c9fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Jane the Actuary"},"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/author\/actuaryjane"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}